We returned to school today and checked our tray of ice but wait, the tray is filled with water!
And at snack A Very Curious Thing Happened...again!
This morning we we discovered the ice from our water pitchers melted completely overnight; all that was left was a tray of water! At snack today we discovered that the carrots (cleaned and packed in water several days ago) were frozen solid in a chunk of water. We tipped out the chunk of carrot-ice and checked it throughout the day. We noticed the carrots became loose and the ice started melting. We observed that the ice was melting but the carrots were not. We checked on the containers of water we filled yesterday and set outdoors on the sidewalk in hopes that it was cold enough to make ice. We are not sure why but our containers outside on the sidewalk did not have ice-only water. We plan to check again tomorrow.
Update: Thursday, January 17
This morning we checked our containers. The water is cold but there is no ice. We found out the water is cold because we tested it with our fingers. We agreed to keep the containers on the trays on the sidewalk for a while longer.
Update: Tuesday, January 22
Our containers are filled with ice! The ice is cold and solid. Water that leaked out of three containers has frozen solid on the trays. The other containers are frozen into the ice on the tray. Robin noticed that a leaf got frozen into the ice that was covering the bottom of the trays.
Update: Thursday, January 24
After siesta today we brought our trays of ice indoors and passed the containers around the circle. As soon as we brought it indoors we noticed that the ice began to melt. Every container that had had water in it now had ice in it. Larger containers we observed had larger chunks of ice. Smaller containers had smaller chunks of ice. The containers that leaked water were completely dry. We observed that the ice was shaped differently from container to container. Shapes of the ice chunks were a perfect match to the container it was formed in. Teacher Ann introduced the words "liquid" and "solid" as we thought about how our water changed to ice. Based on our experiments with our thermometers earlier this week, we think that the water changed to ice when the temperature outdoors "went down." It snowed a little bit this week, too. That gives us a clue that the temperature "went down." If temperature goes "down" far enough we think water will freeze and so will rain.
Teacher Ann and Thatcher came up with an idea; we could continue exploring the differences between liquid states and solid states by using containers that all hold water without leaking and try again to make ice. We could vary the project by adding small toys from the classroom into our containers. Thatcher pointed out that we should put the toys in the cups first and then fill the cups so the "water won't overflow."
Kindergarten had fun getting ready. We used all kinds of small toys from the classroom for this experiment. Some children noticed they had materials that floated, others noticed they used materials that sank. We used glass marbles and jewels, plastic math manipulatives, pennies, plastic Bingo dots, small stones, plastic insects, Legos, and shells. Before we left for the day we put our cups of water and toys outdoors on the sidewalk. We are excited to see what happens!
